


Up Around the Bend

by KirkyPet



Series: How Furiosa Lost her Arm and Narrowly Avoided Becoming a Wife [9]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Art will set you free, Dag finds a prophecy, Escape from the Citadel, Gen, Inspired by Music, Joe is literally full of shit, Pre-Mad Max: Fury Road, Zal Innez is Furiosa's dad - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 04:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9700868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KirkyPet/pseuds/KirkyPet
Summary: Furiosa, Miss Giddy and the Wives plan their escape. How Joe found the Citadel but got stitched up in the process. Giddy tells of the early days. Shit actually happens.





	

Furiosa sits by the door of the Vault, chewing a fingernail abstractedly. The Wives talk amongst themselves. They talk a lot, almost as much as War Boys. She's trying to come up with a plan, but she catches scraps of the conversation that's competing for her interest.

They're talking about their Vault names. Why they were given them. Some remember their birth names, others not, she's not really following the details. But what arrests Furiosa's attention is the mention of Lyra. According to Giddy, she got her name because she could dream up a lie for any occasion, in the blink of an eye. _Didn't help her much in the end though_ , Furiosa thought.

"What was her real name?" Furiosa asks, startling them. She doesn't usually engage with the Wives much, though she sometimes talks quietly with Giddy.

"She never would tell me. Took it to her death. She said she'd write it down for me to find, but I've never found anything."

Furiosa thought of the slip of paper in Lyra's hand. A message to her. It had chilled her to the bone, kept her resolute. A warning. Just four words, no clue as to a name...

"She could talk for hours, but never about herself. She told me nothing, really. Just that her parents were dead and she'd been brought from her home. Always so angry...and most of all, angry at herself. Never talked about her past, or the children she'd had for Joe. I think it was the anger that kept her alive. Until, one day, she came to me, told me she'd finally got a plan. She always had a plan, but she said she'd see this one through. Asked me to help her out onto the ledge first. She said she wanted to see the stars. Then she jumped. I still miss her."

*****

Furiosa sits on her accustomed ledge by the door, thinking. All very well to decide to take them with her, but _how?_ How to get them out of this fucking room for starters. She scanned the Vault absently. The girls had got used to her presence now and had drifted back to their usual pursuits, such as they were. Capable was practicing scales on the piano. Angharad reading in the corner. Toast was staring moodily into the middle distance, idly fiddling with a pincushion. Her hated embroidery lay disregarded on the couch. Cheedo and Dag were mixing up some mess of old rags and glue, some mysterious new way of idling away their captivity. She watched them absently, while she mused over the eternal problem. She was the only one who could come up with a plan. Giddy had wisdom and years, but she hadn't been outside the Vault in a quarter of a century, and the girls had only the sketchiest knowledge of the Citadel. It was up to her. She watched as Dag stretched out her arm and Cheedo plastered the mess over it, working it carefully into the angles of her bony hand and wrist.

"Just don't move til it dries, ok?"

"How long's this going to take, though? I'd better not get pins and needles."

"About an hour, hour and a half tops. It's all for art, remember?" Cheedo reminded her, as Dag groaned.

Images were starting to dance in Furiosa's brain. She didn't chase after them as they spun and whirled. It was an idea-embryo that would grow in its own good time.

Around the time Dag was being carefully cut free from her hardened gauntlet, Furiosa was fidgeting and tapping her fingernails against her teeth. She got up excitedly and took a quick survey of the room, into the annex, the position of the furniture, the ledge where Toast was sitting, then turned and regarded the circular door of the Vault critically.

Angharad and Giddy had been exchanging curious looks for some time. Even Cheedo was becoming distracted from her artistic endeavours by this unwonted restlessness. "What's going on?" she asked, innocently.

Furiosa looked round at them, green eyes sparkling in a way they'd never seen before. "I think I've got a idea...how's Dag's arm looking, Cheedo?"

They all look bewildered, intrigued, skeptical. Apart from Giddy who had stared at Furiosa, muttered _My God, that's it,_ and sat down again.

*

When Furiosa had finished describing the plan as she saw it, she turned to Giddy and asked, "Was that what you were thinking of too?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said 'that's it', like you'd had an idea of what I was going to suggest."

"Yes...no - that wasn't..." Giddy took a deep breath. "I just realised why I thought you looked so familiar the first time I saw you. You reminded me of someone I met once, long time ago."

*

"I came here with Joe. I was a prisoner, or just a hanger-on, I'm still not sure which...sometimes it's a fine line. I wanted to survive, and his convoy were survivors. Plain old Colonel Joe Moore he was, back then. We were looking for water, a stronghold to fortify. There were tales of an aquifer, deep underground, not far off. But nobody knew where.

We met a party of travellers, kind of like gypsies. They were a smart bunch, could steal the nose off your face if they felt inclined. And they liked to have a good time. Music, dancing, magic tricks..."

_Furiosa felt a chill...No, don't give me another reason to hate him...._

"This one old man...he was a master. His son was young, but was just as clever with his hands. Card tricks mainly but, hell, they could do anything. Joe was greatly taken with them. That Zal...he was a tough one. Just a kid, but he was steel, deep down. Got the better of Joe in the end, that's for sure." She looked up at Furiosa. "Who was he...your father?" Furiosa nodded. There were no tears, just a look of burning resentment for what Joe had done to her family before she was even thought of. "They'd been kept prisoner for weeks after Joe had got what he wanted out of them. I don't know how they got free in the end, but I caught them on their way out of the camp. They could have killed me, I wasn't armed. He just looked at me and said,  _"Don't drink the_ _water_ " and they were gone. I suppose you know what happened. But maybe you don't know the full story?"

Furiosa shook her head. "Just that they had to steal a treasure for him. And he killed their family. _My family_. And they got their revenge, some at least."

"They did that. But you don't know what the treasure was?" Giddy chuckled a little sadly. "It was the Citadel itself. Its water, at least. Joe didn't know where it could be found, but he knew some people who might. Unfortunately for him, they weren't friends of his, and they were much, much bigger than him. Knowledge might be power, but it's no good if you don't even know you have it, and these guys weren't even aware what valuable information they were sitting on."

*****

"I don't think Joe actually expected them to succeed. I think it was just his twisted way of having them killed, giving them an impossible task. It was an old military compound, and he knew it was still heavily guarded. And they were just kids really, barely into their twenties. Imagine his surprise when they came back with the documents, not a scratch on them. That was a mistake, but what choice did they have? He had their families at gunpoint. But he wasn't going to let them go after that – they'd them proven themselves even more useful to him than he'd expected."

"The irony was, we were already practically on top of the aquifer. The documents your dad gave Joe were wrong. Sent us on a wild goose chase. We spent weeks going in the wrong direction, months and months of digging. All for nothing. He must've altered them..." she said, with a smile and a shrug. "Joe was pretty pissed off, anyway." 

"Bit shit for you, though." Furiosa sympathised.

"Me? ...I'm reconciled to being a passenger on other people's journeys."

*****

"But he was called the General when dad met him...?"

"You don't think Joe capable of a little self-aggrandisement?" Giddy gave her a look. "He promoted himself. Always a bit grandiose when it came to titles. God almighty, he called himself _Aeneas_ for a while, during his classical phase. That was just after we found the aquifer. Thought he was destined to found an empire. Called his first Citadel wife 'Lavinia'"

"Who was she?"

"Just a poor skinny kid we met along the road. Selling herself for food and water. She already had a baby boy, so Joe thought she'd be a safe bet."

"What happened to the baby?" Furiosa wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"Once he was weaned, he never saw his mother again. Joe trained him up as his first War Boy."

"And the mother?"

"Had a couple of sickly babies for Joe. None survived long. He was so angry that she couldn't ( _wouldn't_ , he said) give him a healthy son, he threw her from the rock face. There were a few more Lavinias after her, until he got bored with that game. After that, he was Immortan Joe. Came up with this V8 business, Valhalla and the rest."

*****

Back to the Plan...it would be a case of pandering to Joe's vanity. That wouldn't be difficult. He desperately wanted to believe his Wives loved and admired him. And Cheedo was going through an artistic phase. Joe wanted his Wives to be 'accomplished', so he was quite happy with this. His definition of female accomplishment was fixed firmly in the eighteenth century, and not in a Maria Edgeworth or Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sort of way. He'd given them a harp, for gods sake. Embroidery, seriously...

So there would be a statue. In honour of the Immortan. He would be a heroic-looking figure, holding the sun in his hands. The Wives (just generic women...they knew their individuality was nothing to him, they were just the newest in a long line) would look adoringly up at him, offering up male babies. The base of the statue would be a circle of War Boys, some straining proudly against the weight of their burden, others saluting their god with a V8 gesture. Or whatever. In truth, it didn't matter a damn what it looked like. It just had to look heavy, and be _hollow._

*****

They'd drawn out a sketch of what the statue would be. Giddy had suggested a working name for it. _'White Western Male'_. They would make it out of rags and glue, supported by wire mesh and with a base of old tyres. It was to be Cheedo's project, with Dag as assistant. Though Dag had her own ideas about how the statue should look, and occasionally rebelled. It often took their combined efforts to talk her down.

"Dag, it'll kind of spoil the plan if we make it like that."

"Oh come on, wouldn't it be really satisfying?"

"Look, when we get to the Green Place, _then_ you can make an effigy of Joe getting fucked up the arse with a pineapple. Until then, we should _focus_."

*****

The plan was Furiosa's and her mechanical skills would be vital in making it work, particularly the elements of misdirection and trickery. If any suspicious person took it into their head to check the Vault after they'd gone, they'd hear a piano playing softly in the annex. At least two beds would be occupied with sleeping, breathing figures.

The wives planned to cut long strands of hair from their heads, just a few hairs at a time, and gather them up, hoarding them carefully. Nearer the time, they would be plaited and arranged, fixed to the 'head' of their respective effigy. They hadn't figured out the final plan yet, but it would be useful one way or another. They could be flexible then, at least. With the excitement of the first rebellious tiny snip, Cheedo thought of something. "But what about Furiosa? How'll we make hers look like her?" gesturing at her close-cropped head.

"I'm the guard, remember? I don't need one." she replied. Then added, with the faintest hint of a smile, "But thank you for forgetting it".

*****

Fine, but how to ensure that none of them would be summoned by Joe on the night _before_ their departure. How to make themselves undesirable without the risk of raising a suspicion? Angharad was off-duty since Giddy had managed to convince Joe that sex at that stage of pregnancy is bad for the unborn baby. But what about the rest of them? Could they all be having a bleed at the same time? It was highly unlikely, after all. They would need a plan. Could they fake it? So they experimented with wax capsules containing blood and red clay. Not a pleasant experience, and they had to be careful not to rouse the suspicions of the Organic in the case of the random checkups he was so fond of performing. It wasn't quite the right consistency and didn't smell the same, but it would deceive another person, if they replaced them regularly and faked cramps. What about sickness? Could they fake vomiting or flu? Giddy checked her books and found a recipe for an emetic, and another to raise a mild fever. She tested them on herself.

They settled on a day. Their plans and mechanisms were ready. The statue itself was of lesser importance. With a blank face, Furiosa passed the message from Giddy that the Wives wanted to offer their Immortan a gift. It would be ready in forty days. He would come and inspect it privately in the Vault, before it was moved onto the lift platform for a public presentation.

Giddy checked her records for their bleeding schedule. There was a chance for Capable, but the other three would be mid-cycle at that time. So it would have to be a fake bleed or sickness for them.

As time drew on, Dag missed a bleed. It was too soon for the Organic to notice, but she knew there would be another Warlord Junior. Toast urged her to take the drugs Giddy had prepared. Maybe they would take it away before it was noticed. Dag just shook her head. _It might be a girl_. However, in the last few weeks Dag, who'd always sneezed in dusty rooms, found that her nose was streaming, eyes were red and she, frankly, looked pretty rough. Giddy said it was probably her hormones changing and making her even more sensitive to things. This could work in their favour. To make certain, Furiosa brought her the pelt of a cat she'd acquired from a trader. Dag would keep it under her pillow while she slept, and give it a good hard sniff whenever she remembered. Gods, she hated cats...

The sick ones would have effigies wrapped up in bed, hooked up to a pump mechanism that Furiosa was working on. She could only get hold of crappy rubber pipes which were cracked with age, but that gave the mechanism a realistically wheezy sound, which was an unexpected boon.

*****

There was an intoxicating sense of hope in the Vault. Giddy sang softly to herself while the girls worked at their tasks. It sounded like a cheerful song, not like the usual kind she'd taught them before. Toast found herself tapping her knee with her pencil in time to the chorus, even though the voice was faint and not a little cracked.

_...fix your mind on a crystal day_

"What's the song, Giddy?"

Giddy laughed a little. She looked years younger. "Here, take a look at this..." She held out her left forearm and pointed to some tiny lettering. Four verses of four lines each, followed by two lines at the end. _Looks like poetry_ , Toast thought.

"And here's the music..." Giddy showed her other forearm. Tiny lines, dots – yes, it was musical notation. "That's amazing, so tiny...how do you read it?"

Capable copied it out on a scrap of cloth and practiced it whenever she got a chance.

*

_Catch a ride to the end of the highway...And we'll meet by the big red tree_

Furiosa reads the tiny print on Giddy's arm. Her eyes widen, she smiles a far-off smile, at a memory she thought had long faded away. "Sounds like home. There was a great spreading tree that turned red before the leaves fell. Right in the centre of the settlement."

Dag looked up to the ceiling, folded her thin hands together and whispered. "It's a prophecy..."

*****

They'd had to be patient. The plan had been almost one thousand days in the brewing. And of course, as they were apt to do, last minute developments meant Giddy had to stay behind in the Vault after the statue was carried out by Furiosa's crew. "I'll join you if I can, but don't wait for me" she'd said. She would at least have the satisfaction of seeing Joe's bafflement at the sight of an empty Vault.

"How is it you're always getting other people out, but never yourself?" Furiosa asked.

"That's worth something, in itself" Giddy replied, with a smile. Furiosa kissed her wrinkled cheek.

*****

"How long did she say we'd have to wait?" Toast asked, for the twentieth time that night.

"Til first light. She'd come for us before the Rig Crew were ready to load up."

" _Shiiiit._ I need to  _go_."

"Just hold it, Toast. Seriously. It won't be long now." Angharad had no idea how long it would be, but she really didn't want the smell of piss adding to the discomfort of being enclosed in a _tiny space_. She hadn't wanted to mention it, but she really wasn't comfortable in tight spaces.  _Just breathe_ , she told herself.  _Oh holy fuck, what was that smell?_

"I couldn't help it. I had to go." Toast whined, breaking the reproachful silence.

"Oh fucking hell. That is properly disgusting." admonished Capable.

"You know what? I'm not sorry. It's my parting gift to Joe." Toast declared, proudly.

"Suppose there's no point holding it in anymore." Cheedo sighed. There was a faint tinkling sound, and a smell of ammonia. Which was nothing compared to the odour already wafting round the interior of the 'White Western Male'.

"Yeah, me too. We can't be expected to wait this long, anyway. And I doubt we'll have time to stop along the way." agreed Dag.

"You're right. Here's to Joe." Angharad took a deep breath and made a slight straining sound. "Hope it's not long till daylight..."

*****

The night before the departure, she'd enlisted her crew to drag the sculpture from the Vault to the lift area. It would sit there until the morning, when it would be presented to Joe as the War Rig prepared to depart. Her guilt was choking her. She knew how she was deceiving them and she felt sick with it. Maybe it wasn't too late...

The crew were in high spirits. They were about to go on their first proper run to Gastown, and the novelty of the statue made for an air of festivity.

So she took them to the barracks, to a room all of their own. Time for a celebration, she said. As they got more and more tipsy, the cheers of 'Immortan!' And 'Rig Crew, shiny and chrome!' Furiosa blinked back tears of grief and resignation. But it was impossible to convey what she had planned without _knowing_ they'd follow her. She'd dropped hints. Like Valhalla was not a certainty, like might be alternatives for them all, different lives were out there for them all. How they were all valuable, to her, to themselves. How they were not things.

"No...we're not things. We're Furiosa's War Crew!" She hoped, but...it was followed with a round cheer of "Valhalla!"

"We are War Boys! Kamakrazee War Boys! Fukashima kamakrazee War Boys! Heading to Gas Town! Hauling Aqua Cola! Produce! Mother's Milk! Joe! Joe! Joe! Immortan Joe! Rev it up for the Immortan Joe!"

No, she'd stick with the plan. Come what may.

*****

There was much relief when Furiosa came to retrieve her charges from their now-reeking hiding place. 

"Fucking hell, what have you lot been doing?" she tried not to gag.

"It's Joe's statue. Only fitting it's full of shit." Angharad snapped back, squeezing herself carefully out of the hidden hatch. 

*****

To distract themselves from the close atmosphere and choking smell of guzzoline, the Sisters whisper the lines of their song over and over.

_There's a place up ahead and I'm going..._

Explosions...what was happening out there? The cries and shouts from the surface were reaching a pitch. They'd heard one gruff voice challenge Furiosa angrily. But they'd kept moving. The girls repeated the words like a mantra, like a prayer.

_...just as fast as my feet can fly._

Suddenly they hear Furiosa's voice cry out, somewhere between terror and exultation. "SANDSTORM!"

"I told you it was a prophecy!" Dag hisses.

_Come on the rising wind, we're coming up around the bend._

**Author's Note:**

> Why did you THINK they were so keen to get cleaned up after they'd shaken off the War Party?  
> *  
> This is Creedence Clearwater Revival song is probably one of my all-time favourites. I must have the musical taste of a concussed two-year old, because anything with lots of clapping makes me go 'yay'. Much to my annoyance, there is no functioning YouTube video.  
> *  
> There's a place up ahead and I'm going  
> Just as fast as my feet can fly  
> Come away, come away if you're going  
> Leave this sinking ship behind  
> ...Come on the rising wind, we're going up around the bend  
> *  
> Bring a song and smile for the banjo  
> Better get while the getting's good  
> Hitch a ride to the end of the highway  
> Where the neons turn to wood  
> ...Come on the rising wind, we're going up around the bend  
> *  
> You can ponder perpetual motion  
> Fix your mind on a crystal day  
> Always time for good conversation  
> There's an ear for what you say  
> ...Come on the rising wind, we're going up around the bend  
> *  
> Catch a ride to the end of the highway  
> And we'll meet by the big red tree  
> There's a place up ahead and I'm going  
> Come along, come along with me  
> ...Come on the rising wind, we're going up around the bend


End file.
